Prospective Look at Long Island

The Islanders are still (and will continue to) suffering through some bad financial decisions, namely the giant-ass contract that Alexei Yashin had and then bought out last summer. It's another $2 million hit to the salary cap for next season, which would translate into improving one or two players on the roster. Looking at the current list of forwards signed on for next season, they could definitely use some help.

It's hard to gauge the roster model that GM Garth Snow is really building for the team, but luckily he's got a franchise goaltender signed on until the apocolypse. The team currently fits quite a few role players acting as front-line guys, until prospects like Kyle Okposo and Blake Comeau are ready to take on the job full-time.

Forwards	Defense	Goaltenders
Mike Comrie	Chris Campoli	Rick DiPietro
Bill Guerin	Radek Martinek
Trent Hunter	Freddie Meyer
Richard Park	Andy Sutton
Mike Sillinger	Brendan Witt
Andy Hilbert
Blake Comeau
Kyle Okposo
Jon Sim

The roster of signed players above are worth an estimated $30.5 million, plus Yashin's $2 million buyout portion and the Islanders already have $32.5 million on the books for next season. Notable players that will hit free agency on July 1st include Miroslav Satan ($4.255 million in '07/'08), Ruslan Fedotenko ($2.9), Jeff Tambellini ($942K) and Bryan Berard ($725K). The team should still have plenty of cap space to bid on one or two top level free agents, if they decide to skip out on Satan and/or Fedotenko, so they join the list of teams that have been a little more savvy with the cap to make more of an impact on future years. No player on the books is worth more than $4.5 million against the cap, which is less than a lot of teams can say at the moment.

The team is definitely in need of a star forward and a star defender, not only for skill, but for some notority in the league. The Islanders seem to be a forgotten team in some respects, except for last season, when they knocked the Leafs out of the playoff picture in the last day. Possibly a play for a player like Marian Hossa or Markus Naslund would be within their grasp or perhaps snag cross-town Czech, Jaromir Jagr. There are plenty of high-priced unrestricted free agents soon-to-be available, which should make the mouths water of Islander brass.

With the number five pick in the Draft, they should be able to pick up one of the key defensemen that are cropped in the high ranks of the list provided by the NHL's Central Scouting. Alex Pieterangelo or Luke Schenn could certainly be on the radar for the Islanders come June.